Comparison of Gothic Elements Literature & Language Book Review (Book Review Sample)

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Comparison of gothic elements
The 19th century American literature provided the world with great and enviable novels, puritan and native literary pieces, and theatrical plays and produced famous writers such as Edgar Allan Poe who tests people’s imaginations with sublime images as well as a variety of features that include melancholic, ghostly and eerie images (Poe, 12). After going through the short stories it is almost impossible not to observe the similarities, setting as well as narrations of the characters. This paper will dig deep into the stories by describing the common gothic elements that are used in “The Tell-Tale Heart, and “the fall of the House of Usher” by Poe. The essay will discuss the elements of Poe’s work that make it to be described as gothic.
"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short fiction story that was initially published in James Russell Lowell’s pioneer in the year 1843. It is broadly considered to be a gothic genre fiction classic and the most famous short stories authored by Allan Poe. The story is narrated by an unknown narrator that strives to convince the audience of his sanity while at the same time describing a manslaughter that he committed. The victim in this narrative was an old man who the narrator described that he had filmy and vulture eyes. The narrator focuses on how the murder was carefully conducted and the body hidden through dismembering it in the bathtub. The body was later buried under the floorboards. In the end the feelings of guilt by the narrator result in mental disturbance as he hears a thumping sound that was interpreted to be the dead man’s beating heart. However, it is not clear whether the narrator and the old man shared any relationship but the narrator also rejects that he had any hatred or resentment feelings for the old man whom he says had never done any wrong to him. Also, the narrator denies that he killed the old man for greed. Therefore, apart from the old man having a vulture-eye which the narrator disliked, there is no other specific motivation that is clear which made the narrator to kill the old man. However, there are some speculations that the old man was a father figure may be the narrator’s landlord or that he worked for the old man as a servant and that may be his vulture-eye represented some kind of power or veiled secret. The uncertainty and lacking details concerning the two major characters stands in sharp contrast to the specific details of the plot that led to the murder.